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CIA

Mark Danner published an important piece in the New York Times on Saturday. Called Tales from Torture’s Dark World, it reveals details about torture from previously unavailable interviews given by detainees held at CIA black sites around the world. Though these detainees never met and were held separately and in isolation, their narratives sound strikingly similar, making it unlikely that the details of their torture at American hands are fabricated. What they describe cannot be anything other than torture. Go and read it for yourself.

Says Danner:

The use of torture deprives the society whose laws have been so egregiously violated of the possibility of rendering justice. Torture destroys justice. Torture in effect relinquishes this sacred right in exchange for speculative benefits whose value is, at the least, much disputed.

The Chicago Tribune and Algeria’s biggest francophone newspaper El Watan have revealed the identity of the man accused of drugging and raping women in Algeria. He is (now former) CIA Station Chief Andrew Warren.

Chicago Tribune:

Warren was described as a highly gifted officer, a convert to Islam who demonstrated a rare ability to blend in among Muslim communities.

“He is exactly the guy we need out in the field,” said a senior U.S. government official who had met with the accused officer in Algiers last summer before the scandal emerged. “He’s African-American. He’s Muslim. He speaks the language.”

“People who have talked to him say he has denied” the assault allegations, said the former CIA official. In an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Warren said “he had engaged in consensual sexual intercourse” with the women.

Why the big deal in American press that this man converted to Islam? That has absolutely nothing to do with the accusations or the investigation. Is it supposed to be a curiosity that an American would choose to be Muslim?

One woman, who has leveled accusations against Warren, said that after drinking “un cocktail à base de whisky et de Coca-Cola” she felt nauseous and Warren invited her to spend the night until she felt better. The next morning, “elle s’est retrouvée allongée sur un lit, totalement nue, seule, avec des maux de tête et des douleurs vaginales”

I’m no accomplished French speaker, but I believe that means that she woke up on a bed, naked and alone, with a headache and vaginal pain.

The CIA’s station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.

…The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.

…Officials say one of the alleged victims is seen on tape, in a “semi-conscious state.”

…”It has the potential to be quite explosive if it’s not handled well by the United States government,” said Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in women’s issues in the Middle East.